


Before She Was An Exalt

by KelonyBarstowe



Category: Exalted
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Female Character, POV First Person, Turtles, character history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 09:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10806759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KelonyBarstowe/pseuds/KelonyBarstowe
Summary: Koki is a night caste from the West, this is her backstory (including why she doesn't go by her given name). Went a little experimental with it, hope it works.





	Before She Was An Exalt

There is a turtle waiting for me in the water.

I am only just becoming a woman and I am alone on this island with its strange plants and noisy frogs and jagged reefs and there is a turtle just outside the cove. It is a giant, and it will eat me whole if it catches me.

I am surviving.

In the dark in the hold of the ship I must be quiet or they will find me. It is not the ship I used to call home, it is large and well provisioned. I do not eat more than I need, do not take anything that might be missed. I breathe with the waves like mother taught me. We have been at sea so long and I do not know where this boat full of strangers is headed but I will not panic. If I only take what I need, if I stay quiet, they will not find me. I am a child and this is my life now.

The sun on the island is hot and bright and the sea and sky stretch out forever. The nearest island is a faint spot on the horizon and I do not know its name and couldn’t swim that far if I tried. I am alone and I do not know how to make a boat and there is a turtle in the water as big as a hut, that rests on a sandbar just outside the cove at low tide, and I know it sees me and it knows I see it. It is waiting for me to make a mistake.

I am a child and I am hiding in my mother’s trunk and I am very quiet while the man who named me yells at her. I have to stay out of his way. She tells me later that he is a good man and he takes care of us and we would not have food or a place to stay without him but I hate him anyway. He makes her sad and afraid and he named me a bad omen and when the other men come they talk with him and give him coins and I have to hide.

His name is Indomitable Typhoon, and I am going to kill him.

Ursoni Bright Eyes holds me on her hip. I am young and the world is large and bright and the city streets are crowded with merchants and travelers and so many people rushing from one place to another. Ursoni pretends to cry and tells the strangers that she need money to feed me and I’m supposed to cry and say that I am very hungry but sometimes I forget and she hits me when we’re away from the crowd. I am always hungry. Ursoni wears a rag over her hair and sometimes I forget I’m not supposed to pull on it and she gets angry with me. There are other beggar children on the street, no matter what street we walk on. The vendors shoo us from their carts, wary of thieves.

My hair is turning blue in the sun. So many years hidden away in the holds of ships, only coming out at night to peek above decks or transfer from sea to land or ship to ship, my hair had turned black as pitch. Now I am in the sun every day and it makes my skin brown and my hair blue, and there are no people here, no one but the frogs that chirp “ko-ki” in the night and the turtles that meander through the reef and up the streams and sometimes carry the little frogs on their backs in the tidal pools, and the turtle in the deep that is waiting for me.

I am surviving.

I am a child in bed with my mother. The sheets are soft and the blankets are heavy, the mattress is worn but comfortable and I sink into it a little. I never want to leave.  
The door slams open and a man stomps in. He grabs me by the wrist and I cry out in pain and surprise.  
“Leave her alone!” my mother yells. Indomitable Typhoon yanks me out of the bed and releases my arm, launching me into the wall. Instinctively I duck and lead with my shoulder, bouncing off with only a bump. He glares at me as he takes my place in bed, black eyes tinged with red from too much rum and shouting.  
I am supposed to leave when a man is in mother’s bed. I never forget this one thing. I skulk out quietly, shutting the door without a creak. I have to go somewhere and hide and be quiet. 

There is a turtle waiting for me in the water.

I imagine myself asking him where my mother is. I could not find her on the ship. I imagine myself tying him to a chair, beating him, making him cry. I imagine letting him see my face, making sure he knows that it’s me as he dies. I imagine a lot of things.  
The room is dark. He does not know I am here. I will not ruin my chances by giving in to curiosity or spite.  
The knife feels heavier in my hand than it really is.

I hit the water badly. The men who threw me overboard laugh as I bob up to the surface, proud of themselves for finding the stowaway. It is the first time I’ve been caught out. I thought I was quiet enough, careful enough, but now I am in the water and there is an island in the distance and if I do not reach it I will surely drown.  
I don’t look back at the men again. Getting to shore is the only thing that matters. I am surviving.

“I can’t take her any more,” Ursoni Bright Eyes says. “She’s too big now, I don’t make any money with her.”  
My mother frowns. “The ship is no place for her.”  
“Then send her to an orphanage, or sell her,” Ursoni insists, shoving me away. I start crying, but she just shakes her head and leaves.  
“It’s alright, Red Sky,” mother tells me. “We knew she wouldn’t be able to watch you forever. You’ll just have to learn how to get by on the ship.”  
I nod and rub the tears away with balled up little fists. I am too young for this.

At first I think it is a normal turtle nearby, but the water here is so clear it takes a moment to realize it is a giant turtle far away. Far away but getting closer. I swim with all my might towards the island, it is not far away now. Even if the turtle is racing towards me, even if it is a creature of the deep and I am already getting tired. All I can hear is the sound of my arms breaking the surface, my own gasping breaths. I don’t dare to look again below or behind me, it will cost too much time. I can see the shoreline clearly, there are trees and rocks ahead. 

“She is too young for this!” My mother yells. I am hiding in the trunk and I hope he does not look for me in here because I’ll be cornered.  
“You spoil her. The girl needs to work,” Indomitable Typhoon says.  
“Then let her work in the kitchen, or on the decks. She’s good with a mop and she’s a fine eye for a lookout…”  
“I don’t need a lookout, or a scullery maid! Now you bring her to me or I will have her in shackles on the next ship bound for the Wild!”  
“I don’t know where she is,” she lies. “You know that girl is always hiding herself away.”  
“You find her, and you bring her to me,” he growls.  
I have to keep quiet.

My hand hits the sand and I scrabble onto the shore, disoriented and unsteady on my feet. The turtle is behind me, pulling itself up easily on the land and lunging towards me, enormous mouth open wide and full of spikes to pull still-living prey down its gullet forever. I run and shimmy up the nearest tree, turtle snapping behind. It breaks the trunk I am climbing and I have to jump into the branches of the next tree, grasping desperately.

The turtle is so large if you made a bed of its shell five grown men could sleep comfortably without touching. Its eyes are like cannonballs, huge and black and impenetrable. Its shell bears scars from things too terrible to imagine, marks from the teeth of sharks and the hooked suckers of giant squid and the beaks of octopuses, and another deep gash that looks like nothing more than an enormous sword wound. It has survived things I cannot imagine. It is still surviving.

The hurricane comes and I am not ready for it. How could I be ready for it? Three seasons on this island and I still don’t know how to start a fire or braid a strong rope or build a boat. There is never enough water, I survive on fish and gulls and jackfruits when the trees deliver them, but the trees know the hurricane season is on us and there are no ripe fruits to steal. The crabs have all left the reef and the fish are cowering, and I have nowhere safe to be.

There is a turtle waiting for me in the water

The wind is too much and I am carried off my feet and far into the sea, the waves choppy and gray under the dark sky. I break the surface badly, plunging into water choked with debris churned up from the depths and washed out from the land. I can’t see.

“You have to go away,” my mother says. “You have to leave the ship and never come back, do you understand?”  
“I can hide,” I say. “He won’t find me.”  
“You cannot stay. Hide on another ship.”  
“But mama!”  
She shushes me. “Do you want him to find you here? Do you want to be taken away to the Wild?”  
“No, mama.” I don’t want to be crying, I want to be brave.  
“You must be quiet, you must be careful,” She says. “I have a water skin for you and some clothes in a bag, it won’t be too heavy. Always make sure you carry water with you on a ship. Never drink the sea water.”  
“Yes, mama.”  
She opens the porthole and hands me the bag. “Hurry,” she whispers. “Be careful.”  
I climb out and dive into the water. Even with the bag, I barely make a splash.

I am surviving.

I throw the turtle a jackfruit. He gulps it down, then butts the tree with his head. I pull another of the yellow-green, bumpy fruits away from the trunk and hurl it down, catching a faint whiff of the syrupy sweetness as he snaps it in half. While he’s busy rooting in the sand for the rest of it, I jump to another tree. He groans, belatedly, and starts shaking the tree I was in just a moment ago. I have to keep moving. It’s hard to keep quiet in the canopy, but I know I’ll be safe if I just keep moving a little longer.

I’m all turned around, the hurricane water is all around me and I cannot see the island or the seafloor it’s nothing but gray sky gray waves and I sputter and choke when I mistake one for the other. I try diving down to find the bottom, thinking if I can find the slope I can follow it home. It’s dark down here and I don’t know if the turtle is around but I’ll drown if I stay out too long. Even below the surface the waves are strong, but I can handle this, I can do this, then something too strong comes and I am tumbling my head my head my head I can’t

It is dark as night in the hold of the ship.  
“I’m scared, mama,” I whine. I clutch at her skirt with my tiny hands in the dark. “I don’t want to stay down here.”  
“Hush, Red Sky,” she says. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re alone down here, just you and me and the rats, and the rats are so much smaller than a big, strong girl like you.”  
I don’t feel big and strong. I miss Ursoni and the market.  
“The dark is nothing to be afraid of,” she says. “You are the scariest thing in this room.”

In the dark, I plunge the knife deep in his chest.

I wake up on the shore, the storm clouds still overhead but brighter than before. I cough and gag salt water, turning to let it all out, gasping for fresh air. I was in the water… my head… I find the sore spot with my fingers and wince. Must have hit it on the rocks in the cove.  
Something is breathing on me.  
I turn and the turtle is there. Its head is so big I could curl up inside, its nostrils flaring wider than my fists.  
I don’t scream. I have to be quiet.  
The turtle nudges me with its snout, mouth closed. Why hasn’t it swallowed me whole? Why am I on this beach? 

My forehead burns, bright golden light blaring out, illuminating the dank little room like midday. Indomitable Typhoon looks at me, horrified, as the glow intensifies, building up in a towering aura behind me. Glittering feathers drift to the floor and fade to nothing, peeling gently away from the wings of a great, golden albatross.  
“Bad omen,” he laughs. He sputters, and there is no more.

I dive in the water, not knowing what to do. The turtle is there waiting for me. I expect him to be afraid, but he swims right up to me and I grab onto the edge of his shell tightly. We swim for hours into the open water, until my glow begins to fade and the sun begins to peek above the horizon.  
Stowaway. Urchin. Whore’s Child. Anathema.   
Red Sky At Morning is right.


End file.
